it's partly owned by the energy company bp. now algeria's interior minister said that two people were killed in the attack. it's believed to be retaliation for algeria's support for the french offensive in mali. as many as ten americans were working at that oil field. the state department hasn't said how many of them right now may be hostages. we are told a special operations team is standing by, quote, on a very short string. this is obviously a very fluid situation. cnn foreign affairs correspondent jill dougherty and former cia officer bill baird join me now. jill, you've been working your sources today. what is the latest? >> we believe obviously this happened at a gas field. if you look at the map, it's in eastern algeria. that's 37 miles from the libyan border. and that's important because they believe that the people who carried this out came in from the east, in from libya. they went to this gas field. it's owned by bp. the algerians and the norwegians. and they carried out this attack. apparently what happened is they